On Wednesday morning, the High Noon campus in Cottonwood was truly an armed compound. Stu had let everyone know about the situation with Graciella and the possibility that she might show up to cause trouble, so they all came to work carrying their various concealed weapons. They spent the better part of an hour in the break room gathered around the TV set and channel-surfing through various local newscasts where El Pescado’s arrest was the top story of the day. Naturally DEA Special Agent in Charge Robert McKay and his arrest team were being cast as the heroes of the piece, but the people in Cottonwood all understood that, for the second time in his life, Stuart Ramey was the man of the hour—Stuart and an AI named Frigg.
When a call from Boise, Idaho, showed up on Cami’s caller ID, she switched the phone onto speaker before she answered. “Have you heard what’s happened?” Traci Cantrell demanded breathlessly. “That Duarte guy, the one from the sketch, has been arrested.”
“We heard,” Cami said. “We were just sitting here in the office discussing that very thing.”
“What should I do about it?”
“If I were you, I’d contact the DEA agent in charge down in Phoenix and have him get in touch with the cold case folks back in Chicago.”
“But will the guy in Phoenix even talk to me?” Traci asked.
“I’m not sure if you’ll reach him directly, but someone at the DEA in Phoenix will be more than happy to talk to you. And later today, I’m planning on circling back to the five other families whose sons were involved in that mess in Panama. Maybe you’re not the only one who remembers El Pescado’s plug-ugly face from back then.”
Once the phone call ended, they moved on to other things. “Tell us about this Thor Foundation,” Ali urged Stu.
“As far as I can tell, it’s a shell organization, supposedly a philanthropic one, established in the Cayman Islands where Owen Hansen was planning on hiding his money. It only had a little over $200,000 in it before Frigg dumped all the Duarte Cartel’s cash into it overnight. Amazingly enough, when Frigg was putting Owen out of business, she added my name as a member of the board of directors.”
“Will Mexico try to claim that money?”
“I don’t know,” Stuart said. “If they do, they can have it, if not . . .”
“You’ll be running an NGO,” Cami said.
“Not me,” Stuart told her. “No way!”
“What about Frigg?” B. asked.
“You mean, am I going to shut her down for good?”
“It seems to me as though in the past few days she’s more than proven her worth,” B. said. “Yes, you’re going to have to fine-tune her to get rid of all those problematic elements that could send us to jail, but if the cartel money ends up sticking and the NGO becomes a multibillion-dollar enterprise, maybe you could put her in charge of running it.”
“From where?” Stuart asked.
“From right where she is,” B. said with a grin. “Down in the man cave. Maybe somebody on the board of directors of Thor Foundation would approve the purchase of a mostly vacant house in the Village of Oak Creek to serve as the foundation’s headquarters. We’d make you a sweet deal.”
“I don’t even want to think about this right now,” Stuart said. “It’s too much.”
Clearly a few vestiges of Stuart 1.0 still lingered.
The break room meeting ended soon after that. Just after noon a building inspector appeared at the reception counter. Shirley didn’t let him set foot beyond the entryway until she had called Abby Henderson over in Prescott and verified that this building inspector, Gary Reece, was the real deal. He was.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, with Stuart seated at his workstation running routine scans, Frigg sent him a flash briefing summons over the Bluetooth.
“What is it?”
“Breaking news out of Phoenix. The DEA is reporting that Graciella Miramar, thought to be Felix Duarte’s daughter and the source of the tip that led to his arrest, has been found dead in a Phoenix-area hotel room, where she is suspected of having committed suicide.”
“What good news!” Stuart exclaimed. “Couldn’t be better.”
“And good for our team?” Frigg inquired.
“Definitely,” Stuart said. “I think it counts as a home run.”
“Home run,” Frigg repeated. “In baseball, a hit that allows a batter to make a complete circuit of the bases; an unqualified success. Yes, Stuart, I believe Ms. Miramar’s death is a home run.”
It was late that night, just as blanket-swaddled Stuart was about to drift off to sleep on his chaise, when he remembered he had never asked for Frigg’s report on the opera.
“Frigg,” he said. “Did you have a chance to study Thaïs?”
“Yes, I did,” Frigg replied. “It is not what I would consider to be a happy story. Thaïs and Athanaël would have been better off if they had been on the same team.”
“Yes,” Stuart said, “that’s it exactly. Good night, Frigg.”
“Good night, Stuart, sleep well.”